Talk:Shine Bug

A while ago, i found this strange bug with shine bugs (and all of its variants). While designing shine bug reactors, suddenly all the shine bugs flew out of their reactor simultaneously into the new reactor i was building. No matter how many times i tried to put them back inside the old reactor, they kept flying into the new reactor, always following the same path. Anyway, here's everything i've found so far.

Shine bugs will not exit a tile of liquid if:

- It is not drowning. - The amount of liquid inside the tile is equal to or higher than 7/19 times the amount required to drown a critter in that specific liquid type. - There is no reachable "prioritized tile" within 32 tiles left and down, 31 tiles right and 30 tiles up, not including the tile the shine bug is in.

Prioritized tiles are tiles that have at least 7/19 times the amount of liquid required to drown a critter, which has been dropped into said tile, all at once. This "prioritized" state seems to disappear when loaded.

If it is not already in one and there is such a prioritized tile within 30 tiles up, 31 tiles right and 32 tiles left and down, (not including the tile the shine bug is in,) the shine bug will start to fly towards it. Sometimes, it stops before reaching its goal. This seems to be more likely to happen when close to a lot of other shine bugs.

If they are in a prioritized tile and there is another one within their reach, their actions almost seem random. As long as no tiles have been changed nearby, the results are consistent. If they first chose to go from one tile to the other, all new bugs that are spawned inside a tile follow the same path. However, currently, all attempts to recreate any previously obtained result have failed. Even when respecting the location and order of every action, the result is different. (I haven't yet tried loading a save to place everything at the exact time of the last experiment, i will soon test if that changes anything.)

There are still a lot of things i need to test. I've only been able to make a two way route once (when shine bugs are in tile 1, they go to tile 2, and if they're in tile 2, they go back to tile 1). Currently, all other tests have a beginning and an end. I'll also have to find out how shine bugs choose a tile, which might help me find how to make a two way route.

'''If you've ever heard of/seen this bug, how did you find out about it? I'd love to find out more about this bug. Has anyone found an explanation for this strange behavior in the game's code?'''

This might not be very useful, but it is definitely important to know how exactly shine bugs work. (would also be very fun to play around with, to control shine bugs without having to restrict areas using physical objects.) ZeanZarzin (talk) 10:49, 21 April 2021 (UTC)